


Weapon Of Choice

by zillah975



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Gunplay, M/M, Object Insertion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-07
Updated: 2010-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-10 10:47:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zillah975/pseuds/zillah975
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Are you going to shoot me, or do you want a drink first?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weapon Of Choice

**Author's Note:**

> For the "object penetration" square on my [](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**kink_bingo**](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) card.
> 
> **Beta:** the adored [](http://helens78.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**helens78**](http://helens78.dreamwidth.org/), after whose extremely helpful comments I made copious edits; any remaining errors were probably introduced then and are entirely my fault.

Roque was lucky. A dozen civilians at the Port of Los Angeles had been caught in the grudge match between Clay and Max, and when the medics found him half-conscious on the tarmac where he'd dragged himself out of the smoking wreckage, he was just another, with no ID but too badly burned for them to care who he was or why he was there. They just got him onto the hospital chopper and in the air. When he woke up swathed in bandages and with a fuck-off big hospital bill, he revived an old alias from two years before, clean as a whistle. He put the bill in Damon Bedford's name, and he walked out of the hospital at just past three o'clock in the morning, thirteen Sundays after he was rolled in.

His legs had taken the brunt of it. The fact that he could walk at all wasn't much short of a miracle, but standing alone in the lukewarm Los Angeles night waiting for a cab, Roque didn't feel very goddamned lucky.

He threw away the Bedford identity and picked up a different one, one he had used in Belfast before Jensen or Cougar, before Pooch, before anyone but Clay. And Clay wouldn't be looking. Clay thought he was dead. For all intents and purposes, he was.

The new ID wasn't as clean as Bedford, but with a few tweaks it was clean enough. As Michael Williams he got a job with Trask-Imhardt Group, a private security contractor in Portland that didn't check too hard into its applicants' backgrounds as long as they knew their shit. They put him to work in the training department, teaching tactics where his limp and his cane and his scars would be a warning to the trainees not to fuck around, and where it didn't matter so much if Roque was a little slower than he used to be, and blind in one eye.

The patch made him look like Nick Fury, so with his second paycheck he bought a leather trench to go with it. He shaved his head, too, but that was just because it made the scars on the back of his neck stand out more. He liked the way the trainees eyed them when they thought he wasn't looking, like they didn't know whether the scars were more freakish or more bad-ass. And as long as they snapped to when he spoke, he didn't care.

He didn't look for the team, he didn't want to know where they were. Every time he thought of them it was with a stone weight in his chest that made him wonder if he should finish what Clay started. Once, in the T.I.G. cafeteria, he overheard some of the trainees talking about a dust-up in Florida that sounded like it could be them, and he left before he could hear the rest. His heartbeat didn't slow to normal until he got back to his classroom, and when it did, it left him feeling sick and alone.

After the first month he stopped keeping a loaded gun in the apartment. That stone was weighing on him heavy, but if he was going to do it, he was going to do it because that was what he wanted, not because he'd had a bad fucking day and one too many drinks and the gun was right there.

He figured his subconscious was trying to kill him, though, because a few months after Trask-Imhardt finally added his name -- Michael's name -- to their website's "Our Instructors" page, he came home on a rainy Thursday night to find Franklin Clay lounging in his second-hand recliner like he had always been there, with his .45 leveled at Roque's chest.

"You didn't think I'd notice?" Clay said.

Roque took off his coat and hung it on the hook by the door, and leaned his cane in the corner. He didn't bother turning on a light. His heart was pounding, his blood roaring in his ears, but he didn't know whether it was because Clay was here to kill him, or because maybe he wasn't, or just because it was Clay. After everything. "What are you doing here, Clay?"

"I think the more interesting question is, what are you doing here? How in the hell did you survive that explosion?"

"I don't think that's the more interesting question at all." Roque ran his hand over his head. "I made it into the head before the main blast hit. Are you going to shoot me, or do you want a drink first?"

Clay hesitated then said, "You got scotch?"

"Rye whiskey or vodka."

"Whiskey's fine."

Roque poured them each a drink while Clay watched, and he put Clay's on the coffee table. He sat down on the couch across from him, and only then did Clay pick it up.

"Do the men know?" Roque asked.

"That you're alive?" Clay shook his head. "If I want you dead, I'll kill you myself."

Roque took a swallow, liquor burning all the way down. He looked at Clay. "Why haven't you?"

"Been asking myself that since you walked in."

The silence stretched between them, but the .45 didn't waver.

"Aisha still around?" Roque asked at last. There was bitterness in his mouth when he said her name.

Clay nodded. "Only 'til we get Max."

"You ain't got him yet?" Roque shook his head, smiling a little. "Shit, man."

"Yeah, well, we might have if my S.I.C. hadn't sold us out for a goddamned paycheck."

Roque felt it like a punch to the chest. "Your S.I.C.? Your _S.I.C.?_ I was a hell of a lot more than that, you arrogant piece of shit."

"Yeah, you were," Clay said, cool as fucking ice. "And now you aren't even that." And if Roque hadn't known him the way he did, he wouldn't have heard the heat underneath, and the disappointment. But he did.

"Who made that choice? It damn sure wasn't me." Roque took another swallow.

"Oh, you're going to make this about jealousy now? Roque, for--"

"No! No, fuck you, Clay, _fuck_ you," Roque growled, jabbing a finger at him. "I wasn't the one who stopped listening, I wasn't the one who stopped giving a damn about anything but revenge." Clay started to interrupt, but Roque rolled right over him. His heart was pounding with all the things he wanted to say, all the anger that had been burning inside him. "No, you put it ahead of everything -- ahead of me, ahead of the men, ahead of their families. Hell, Clay, you put it ahead of your own goddamned survival! You act like some big damned hero with a righteous cause, but all you are is another revenge-driven killer." He shook his head. "You ain't nothing, Clay." The words didn't even sound true, but they felt good, and he said them again. "You ain't nothing."

Clay was silent, and Roque didn't need to look up to feel him watching. "What does that make you?" he asked finally.

Roque laughed; it was a harsh sound. "I ain't nothing either, man. What am I, I'm teaching punks how to take out people like you and me, I'm coming back here every night and drinking 'til I fall asleep. One day I'll probably pick up a gun and end it myself if you don't do it for me. But at least I've got a home to come back to, got a -- got a home to die in," he said, and laughed again, gravel in his raw throat. "At least I ain't sleeping out in the jungle every night chasing a goddamned ghost."

There was another long silence, and then the low rumble of Clay's wry amusement, like distant thunder. "There isn't anyone like you and me, Roque. There's only you and me."

"Yeah, you, me, and that Kimber Custom makes three," Roque said, jerking his chin at Clay's pistol. Clay looked at it like he'd forgotten he was holding it, but Roque knew better. That was Clay's sidearm since the day the team was formed, he didn't forget he had it. He sure didn't forget it when he was pointing it at the only thing he'd had longer. "Why'd you even bring that if you're not going to use it?"

"Who says I'm not?"

"Taking your sweet goddamned time about it."

Clay smiled, heavy-lidded. "You in that much of a hurry to check out?"

Roque sighed and rubbed his eyes. "It's been a long damned week, Clay, and I've got work tomorrow. I don't feel like dancing this dance tonight."

"Maybe we ought to pick a different tune."

"'We'? I don't remember getting a say in this one," Roque pointed out, but there was a tone slipping into Clay's voice that he hadn't heard since they got out of Bolivia. Sounded like Clay was thinking of a different dance altogether, and Roque felt a familiar desire uncoiling in his belly.

"Why don't you come over here, Roque?"

"Why don't you put that gun down," Roque answered.

Clay huffed a laugh. "That would be very stupid of me, and I'm not feeling particularly suicidal."

"What, Clay, getting soft? You think you need a gun to take out an old cripple like me?"

Clay's grin broadened and he shook his head. "Roque, how long have we known each other? You may be a lot of things, but with one eye and no legs at all you'd still be twice as dangerous as anyone I know. If you hadn't wanted that money more than you wanted to kill me, I don't know if I'd be sitting here right now."

"I didn't want to kill you," Roque said, then shrugged at Clay's expression. "Okay, maybe a little. More than that, though, I wanted out, and you just didn't want to let me leave."

"You're right about that. I didn't."

And it was something in Clay's voice. Something that surprised him, and made his chest open up like he hadn't taken a deep breath in a year. Something so stupidly simple.

Clay had never wanted this either.

Roque stood up, and Clay stood up with him, the pistol leveled at his chest. They met halfway in the darkened room, standing by the window where the streetlights lit the rain. He felt Clay's breath, warm on his skin, saw the beat of his pulse in his throat, and Clay brought the barrel of that pistol up to stroke gentle as a finger down the plane of Roque's cheek.

Roque kept looking into Clay's eyes and turned, brushing his lips over the cold metal. "You planning to blow my head off?" he murmured. "Make a hell of a mess."

"I didn't want to believe it." Clay drew the weapon down along Roque's jaw. "I kept waiting for you to pull something, I thought maybe you had a plan you just hadn't told me about."

Roque shook his head. "Only plan was to get my life back."

The barrel of the pistol rested against Roque's lower lip, and Clay was so close it would have taken nothing at all to turn the tables, to get control of the weapon and get control of Clay. Except no one ever had control of Clay, not even when he was on his belly letting you take what you wanted.

"What about the men? Did you think about them?"

"I never wanted them to get hurt," Roque answered. "I told Pooch he should go home. Told them we weren't going to live through it, they had every chance to leave. They're stubborn bastards, Clay, just like you are."

"And me?" Clay asked.

Roque let out a breath. "Yeah, I wanted you to hurt. Shit yeah. That was all, though. They needed you alive to take the fall, and as long as you're alive, you'll find a way out from under. I was just...too tired to be the one helping you anymore."

"After everything," Clay said quietly, "you were just too tired?"

"You weren't listening to me anyway, not unless I was telling you what you wanted to hear. What the hell kind of good is that? Fuckin' exhausting, fighting you all the time."

Clay shook his head. "Then stop fighting."

Roque saw it coming, and his dick was stiffening even before Clay's mouth closed on his, and Clay slid his hand around the back of Roque's neck and pressed the pistol to his jaw.

The rain was coming down harder now. When Clay crowded close, his hard-on pushed against Roque's groin and made him ache, and he dropped his hands to Clay's hips and dug his fingers in, and their tongues slid together in wet velvet heat, teeth clashing. That was them all over, coming together and breaking apart.

Clay stopped the kiss but he didn't pull away. "Do you trust me?" he murmured instead, and touched the barrel of the pistol to Roque's mouth. "Stop fighting. Just...stop."

His hand was tight on the back of Roque's neck, and Roque opened his mouth and let Clay push that pistol inside. Steel and gun oil and the smell of Clay all around him, and Clay pushed it deeper, cold against his tongue.

Clay was watching it like it meant something. He drew it out slowly and Roque hollowed his cheeks around it, seeing the heat grow in Clay's eyes, and when Clay pushed it slowly back in Roque's cock throbbed. It was a new game, but he couldn't say it wasn't one he'd thought about. He'd always pictured Clay on the other side of it, though, pictured his own hand holding the gun, pushing it into Clay's mouth, watching Clay give in and take it.

Clay's breath sighed out of him, and he leaned in and licked at Roque's mouth, stretched around the barrel, then tipped his forehead against Roque's temple. Roque's cock was aching, and Clay was drawing the pistol out, and pushing it in.

It was crazy; they both knew it. It had to be one of the most fucked up things they'd ever done, but it didn't feel fucked up, it didn't feel crazy. After everything else, Roque thought maybe it was the sanest they'd been in a long time.

Clay's voice was rough when he finally spoke again. "You want me to finish it, Roque? You want me to pull the trigger?"

Roque took his mouth off the gun and shook his head. "I don't want you to pull the trigger," he said, and he drew Clay in and Clay let him.

"I like how you don't even say you're sorry," Clay murmured after a while, his lips against Roque's skin.

"We both got a lot to be sorry for," Roque answered. "Neither one of us ever been much for saying it."

"I thought maybe the way I'm not pulling this trigger would count for something."

"It does." Roque worked his hand between their bodies and started getting Clay's zipper down. "Counts for a lot. I thought maybe the way I'm not taking that gun away from you might count for something, too."

Clay chuckled, then groaned when Roque pushed inside and palmed Clay's cock roughly. "It does. It does."

 

Later, Roque said he was too old for sleeping on the couch, and the two of them moved to the big bed, and Roque fell asleep sober for what seemed like the first time in months. He woke up before dawn when the edge of the bed dipped, and he lay still and listened as Clay got dressed in the dark. Neither of them said anything; Roque pretended to sleep, and Clay let him pretend. After the front door closed, Roque got up and made his way through the living room to lock it, then took a piss and went back to bed, and tried not to think.

When he opened his eyes in the dim morning light, the first thing he saw was Clay's sidearm sitting on the nightstand.

He stared at it for a long time. When he picked it up, he could tell from the weight that it wasn't loaded, though he checked the chamber just to be sure. It was empty; he put the safety back on anyway. There was a folded piece of paper underneath it, and Clay's sprawling handwriting.

_Hold onto this for me, I'll come back for it when Max is finished._

_Don't pull the trigger._

"Son of a bitch," Roque muttered. "Son of a bitch." Then he laughed, and rubbed his eyes, and got out of bed. It was Friday morning, and he had to get ready for work.


End file.
